Re: Overwrite a built in Lua function with an application specific version

["Thomas Harning Jr." <harningt@...>]

On 6/13/07, RJP Computing <rjpcomputing@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am new to Lua so I apologize if this question is easy. I have a GUI
> application that does not have a terminal and I wanted script writers to be
> able to see there print() statements in the GUI. Now I am sure I could catch
> the standard in and out, but that is a real pain. I was hoping I could
> overwrite the print function in Lua to call my applications version of it
> and then display it in my user interface. Can this be done?
Any function can be overwritten by reassigning its global... (you can
setup environment tables+metatables to prevent such overwriting.. but
thats another story.

Basically what you'd want to do is:
function print(...)
 local args = {...}
 for i = 1, select('#', ...) do
   doSomeIO(args[i])
 end
end

or more optimally
function print(...)
 local args = {...}
 for i = 1, select('#', ...) do if args[i] == nil then args[i] =
(somethingElse) end
 doSomeIO(table.concat(args, separator))
end

Hopefully that helps out
--
Thomas Harning Jr.